Michelle Goldberg

…Here’s a pact, please read: the following post is going to link to some terrible anti-homebirth articles and some positive responses. Please don’t read the comments on either, and please don’t feel the need to chime in. If you want to say something thankful to Jennifer Block, visit her on her Facebook page and send her a word or two of encouragement. If you want to complain to Michelle Goldberg, find her email and please remain polite and respectful and factual. If you want to respond to the Dr. OB, please don’t. She’s a fame-hound and I don’t think we should give her the time of day. Pretty please, okay? deal? It’s for your sanity dearest reader, please.

Now onward! Some of you may already be privy to the back and forth debate between Jennifer Block (if you haven’t read Pushed, you should!) and Michelle Goldberg, but if not, here’s a little back story. It all started with Ms. Goldberg’s piece in the Daily Beast, Homebirth: Increasingly Popular, But Dangerous ( I didn’t link to it at the time, because it relied so heavily on the opinion of a certain Dr.OB that I made a pact never to link to, so I’m making an exception, this time (reread the above pact, please.) Suffice it to say, the article was not pretty. A few days later however, the response that Jennifer Block wrote for Slate.com,How to Scare Women, was much prettier, beautiful in fact, and inspired this comic.

Since that response, Ms. Goldberg and that Dr.OB have both penned responses and more writers have joined the fray, all anti-homebirthing left and right, it’s ugly and I don’t know how it will possibly end, or how Jennifer Block will maintain her sense of calm. (She did just pen this: Separating Ideology from Evidence in the Homebirth Debate) and I do know that there are more comics on their way.